Polish the Glass, by Keltie Wright

This game is a short- or medium-length choice-based game in which the narrator describes their mother’s struggles with mental illness during their childhood and their own anxiety isuses. It’s an odd work, and I’m not quite sure how I’d characterize it, especially while avoiding overt spoilers.

Gameplay: I would consider the game to be a well-deserved parody of a certain genre of interactive fiction, and it’s a more restrained and muted treatment than most parodies are. It does its job too well, though; the more unusual content takes a while to show up in full, and the part leading up to it gets a bit tedious. 6/10.

Mechanics: Due to the genre being parodied, there’s not much interactivity in the game; almost all of the choices simply advance the static text. There’s a slightly more open segment toward the end, but it still doesn’t offer much variety for the player. 3/10.

Presentation: There are some typos in the text (a few commas and an apostrophe missing, “It’s surface is dusty,” etc.), but nothing very distracting. The tone of the text is strong throughout, and the sounds and other effects toward the end of the game reinforce the atmosphere. On the other hand, I found the occasional forced delays in the text to be annoying roadblocks that break up the story’s building momentum. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like choice-based personal narratives.